1) There’s a new symmetry to the story of the challenge to Jesus’ authority in verses 1-8. On the one hand, there’s a clear chiastic structure: A. Authority: Question B. John’s baptism: Question B. John’s baptism: No answer A. Authority: No answer There’s also the pattern of alternative speakers: A. Priests ask question B. Jesus answers with a question A. Priests reason and don’t answer B. Jesus refuses to answer a question 2) There’s yet another stone reference in v... Read more
INTRODUCTION Once Jesus has cleared out the buyers and sellers in the temple, he turns the temple into a house of teaching (19:47-48). Furious at his attacks on them and the provocative action in the temple, and envious of the crowds, the chief priests, scribes, and other leaders look for ways to get rid of Him. The order of the chapter is important: Jesus reminds His enemies of John’s baptism (vv. 3-8), claims to be the Son who is rejected... Read more
If the disciples are silenced, Jesus says in answer to the Pharisees who demand that they stop hailing Him as king, then these very stones will cry out. He is on His way into Jerusalem, and the stones are the same stones that will someday be thrown down, the stones of the city and temple. The disciples are silenced (by the Jews) and the stones, not one on top of another, do cry out that Jesus is the King who... Read more
Roger Scruton reviews David Hurst’s *On Westernism* in the January 23 issue of the TLS . While challenging Hurst’s use of Richard Dawkins’s concept of “meme,” he concludes that it is an important book about the contours and imposition of the global ideology that Hurst calls Westernism. Here’s Scruton’s summary of Hurst’s central thesis: “we find ourselves in a world where ideas that have no intrinsic rationality have gained ascendancy over what ought to be, and once were, self-evident truths.... Read more
Jed Perl, art critic for the New Republic , has a rant about John Currin and other contemporary painters in the Feb 16 issue of TNR . Scathing is too weak for this review. He says that Currin produces trash, and incompetent trash at that. Currin believes in nothing other than his own self-promotion. And he is only one of a “band of sleazeball figure painters” that are rising in reputation today, rising because of a nefarious alliance of art... Read more
Peter Dickson reviews Michael Wood’s BBC film In Search of Shakespeare in the Feb 16 edition of The Weekly Standard . He points out why many scholars are not convinced by Wood’s claim that Shakespeare was a Catholic He admits that “the evidence for the staunch Catholicism of Shakespeare’s parents and his own dossier as a crypto-Catholic remains impressive. His favorite daughter, Susanna, failed to attend and initially defied inquisitive officials about her nonattendance at Anglican services in 1606 .... Read more
Peter Dickson reviews Michael Wood’s BBC film In Search of Shakespeare in the Feb 16 edition of The Weekly Standard . He points out why many scholars are not convinced by Wood’s claim that Shakespeare was a Catholic He admits that “the evidence for the staunch Catholicism of Shakespeare’s parents and his own dossier as a crypto-Catholic remains impressive. His favorite daughter, Susanna, failed to attend and initially defied inquisitive officials about her nonattendance at Anglican services in 1606 .... Read more
Eucharistic meditation, Feb 15: Luke 19:5-7 In one sense, both of the events in Jericho are about sight and blindness. On the way in to Jericho, Jesus healed a blind man, and at the beginning of our sermon text today we were introduced to a man who wanted, above everything else, to “see” Jesus. As I pointed out last week, this is important in the context, for the disciples are notably blind to what Jesus is teaching them: They do... Read more
Exhortation for February 15: Since the time of David, Psalm-singing has been the center of prayer and singing for the people of God. That is obvious in Judaism, for from the time of Solomon’s temple, through the “Second temple” period after the exile, and into the period of the New Testament, the Psalter was the hymnal of the church. The same is true of the early church. Psalms were chanted and sung in churches during the early centuries; monks chanted... Read more
Though the issue of Abraham’s sinfulness is not immediately in view in the “justification” text of Gen 15, it is a crucial issue in the deeper context and structure of Genesis. This is true in two ways: First, Abraham is suffering under the curse of barrenness and death, and the promise will be fulfilled only if that curse is overcome, only if God raises the dead. Second, the promise that Abraham believes in order to be reckoned righteous is a... Read more
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